Dirty Little Secret
by heartofShou
Summary: oneshot. Hamlet and his uncle find that they may have too much in common, but it is in their differences that history is made.  HamletxLaertes, ClaudiusxGertrude


DISCLAIMER: I do not own _Hamlet_, its characters, its plot, etc. English translation of "Ningyo Hime" provided by There some references to God and vague implications of Catholicism. These are very few and were meant to keep the background of the story. They are not meant to offend anybody.

_**Dirty Little Secret**_

"_No matter how much I hurt inside_

_I'll always be near you_

_I'll never release_

_Your hand that I held_."

- Chobits, **Ningyo Hime**

There had to be a difference between them. There had to be.

_Fingers trembled over soft, quivering lips. The sense of forbidden, of temptation raced through their blood, becoming their aphrodisiac and kept two pairs of wide eyes from parting. _

Hamlet watched the funeral as though through another being's eyes. This heavy, burdened body was left behind to march beside his mother. The very land of Denmark seemed to have fallen into mourning as days of heavy rain had bombarded the disheartened country. The first day of respite and people clambered to put together a funeral. The sky remained overcast as though determined to hold onto its dirge setting. The thick mud sucked down and stuck just as stubbornly to the boots of the gathered, making the already disconsolate people move even slower, their bodies becoming even more weary.

Another part of Hamlet, a part that would not come to life for some time yet- but had already began to feed- was aware of Claudius's close presence, hovering over his mother. By her elbow, near her shoulder… he was always touching her, caresses becoming firmer and more daring as the body is lowered into the ground.

_They were close, supporting each other, but always with that margin of space between them. That darned space that was so small and yet always seemed to encompass the world and its rules, constraining and constricting them from each other, even when there was no one else around to see… _

But he won't think of that. Later, before his mind unraveled, no longer able to hold truth and lies together, losing hope along with trust into a futile end… before the weight choked him into making his deceptive act more real than he could have imagined, that image would come back to haunt him, throwing loose a spark among the tinder. But for now it was only recorded onto a numb mind, too embittered by sorrow to look anywhere but the deep hole in front of him. A deep, dark hole that felt more like the home of his memories than this cold, wet world.

A presence shifted, moving closer to his still frame. It was unnoticeably closer, unable to be detected by the eye. Any human unconsciously adjusting their body for comfort could have unknowingly closed the same amount of distance. However, it was not any other human. He knew, from the way his body responded to that presence alone and how he felt it in the core of his bones, just who it was. There was no one else in the world that could make him feel that way, made him think the way he did with this person, caught his thoughts and entangled them so as to ensnare his heart…

The movement had been on purpose. The only way to offer comfort without breaking the boundaries they had imposed upon themselves, boundaries that they had tightened more strongly than the world around them gave thought to. Because the world did not have thoughts like they did, urges and needs… It was fear that made them tighten themselves and acknowledging that only brought guilt and sorrow, making it worse. Because they did not deserve that, but "deserve" is such a strong word and applying it to how they felt made them only confused. What did they deserve? There was a decision to be made though neither voiced it. A decision which with either option would bring rewards and loss. Which did they dare take?

_The bed beside them only made the choice before them loom. A dark, lonely room away from those that would miss them, where no one would care to look, and would think nothing of it to see neither of them until later in the morning. There was a case of want in many terms of the word, stated by both the presence of the bed and their presence with each other. A case of want that was growing into need and in the dark of night, with not even the moon as their witness, could a crime committed in the dark still be a crime without the world to judge them? However, many moments had built up this eternity to mature their hearts so that they understood that they were to be their own judge and jury. No one could condemn them but themselves, but the human race had picked up the bad habit of causing themselves the most misery by their own inflicted secrets._

It was a gesture meant to comfort, but in the end it would only add to the damage. The memory would fall into place with how Hamlet had glanced up to look at Laertes, if only to look because somehow looking was enough. Then, like water droplets, the memories would start to flood.

Laertes still stared down into the grave, but Hamlet instinctively knew that they had become aware of each other.

Neither moving nor doing more than glancing, even though there was so much to be said, but now not being the time and place.

Somehow the fact that they did not do this hiding and sneaking at the mouth of his father's grave for romantic reasons, but for a different kind of loving and caring, made their relationship- whatever it was- that much deeper.

Then, in that other part of Hamlet's awareness, would be his mother and his uncle.

Gertrude burying herself in Claudius's arms as she sobbed, and no one thinking anything of it, so sure were they of her great grief.

Claudius's arms coming to embrace, slowly and gently, like a sigh of relief, like a breath of, "Finally."

How he tucked his chin right over the tip of her head and closed his eyes like a man deep in prayer.

Gertrude grasped so tightly onto Claudius's jacket that her knuckles turned white.

No one paying any attention to how she leaned into his body and with the touch of her hip against his, she almost sagged with relief.

Then there stood Hamlet and Laertes, standing a distance apart as was proper, but keeping close in a tight space inside the knowledge that they stood together.

_He took the first step forward as he always did. He was always the one to initiate their moments together, always the one to play temptation. But they could play temptation too. Just by standing there and looking up at him, eyes wide with the unknown but steady with determination, with the assurance to press him forward they beguiled him. He took a step forward and softly caressed the edge of the check, his hand cupping to lift up their chin. The chin that always been held firm with stubborn will suddenly trembled as though wanting to speak, but there would be no words here. Instead they leaned forward into his body and grasped onto the sleeve of his shirt. Haltingly, as though with the slightest rushed movement they could break apart, they dipped their head out his hand and laid it against his shoulder. He too shuddered with a sigh and two arms, so strong but held by the world to always be weaker than someone else, came and wrapped around them. They were so close together that they were but one shape in the dark, one shadow cast upon the floor and onto the bed. But still there was a distance between them, a distance there was only one way to erase. _

They were so alike and it was driving uncle and nephew apart. It was as though their secrets, hidden so that they could not even guess the other's, radiated against their skin and together rubbed each other raw. However, there was knowledge in not knowing, and somehow they must have sensed it with each other.

The marriage made it worst.

Hamlet had been openly flabbergasted, the least of reasons being the insult to his father. He did not know this of course. The prince only knew the anger that would boil in him when he saw his uncle grasp onto his mother's hand, the driving rage when she would turn and smile up at him, and a cold, empty feeling that made his head whirl even after they left. These unbalancing emotions made him edgy and even quicker to snap something back. Natural grief made Hamlet keep his father affixed in his mind's eye, but he confused this with the reason for his increasing bitterness. However, there is side hidden, even from the own self, filled with motives that are either too mind-shattering to be looked at or unable to be dealt with in the normal fashion.

So Hamlet could only watch as Gertrude and Claudius became increasingly open with their affection, almost becoming giddy with the amount of attention they put on each other. It seemed ridiculous, but they were consciously oblivious to the odd stares they gathered. They had eyes only for each other, as well as hands and lips…

Then Ophelia would come, eyes brimming with love, wanting to carry him away into a world of spring and youth, where love was as precious and beautiful as the flowers waiting to be plucked. And with her light came the dark eyes in the shadows, the dark eyes that never judged or showed hurt at his sister's actions. Because how could Laertes be angry with his sister for loving Hamlet? As he strode away to make audible plans for travel, leaving Hamlet to follow the King, Queen, and lady, he would count the reasons for loving in his mind and let the innumerable factors drown him into Hamlet.

_The sensation of hair against his chin made him move without realizing it. Lips brushed hair and the realization that no one was around to stop them, not even that person that had always stood between them, was brought home as an epiphany. In euphoria, he went on, more eagerly, to brush lips against their forehead, their eyes, their cheeks… They accepted it all, lifting their faces up like flowers to the sun, and accepted it like rain falling upon their skin. Their hands lifted to curl around his neck and they used the leverage to pull themselves up, whispering back their own kisses along his face. He breathed in the scent of them and it awoke a hunger within him. _

Even after the end, when all that was left of Elsinore were cold bodies and one man to tell the tale, they never understood the reasons why. Horatio, psychologically built for his fate as a witness, might have stood the best chance of explaining it, but only the walls were left to know the truth. The truth had as much soaked into the stone as the spilled blood. "If walls could talk," is the saying, and how much of the tale would be different if it were so?

_Here was the choice, here was the crucial moment. They were unaware of it, their minds too filled with love and the sensation of each other. Their hands moved with a will of their own and lips reached out instinctively. It was almost primal how they focused in on the pleasure, but despite what most think, the person who is the partner does matter. There is something different about the actions then, a pleasure derived only from having the right person held tightly, so it was no wonder how their minds wheeled and their hearts beat fit to burst. _

_However, no two loves can be the same, no matter how similar…_

Laertes and Hamlet facing off in a duel, too blinded by anger and hurt to think about the overall picture, only about the here and now and reprieve.

Claudius and Gertrude watched among a crowd, but they were the only other two that mattered.

Somewhere along the way, fate had taken things into its own hands again. It bumbled things enough so as to make Hamlet and Laertes switch swords. It blindfolded freewill long enough to make Gertrude pick up the poisoned goblet. Perhaps, in the end, there was to be punishment for their crimes, real or imagined. If so, then is it not fitting that Hamlet and Claudius, always the instigators, pay the steepest price?

_Poetry would have a nicer way of putting how they practically fell onto the bed. Ballads are written around the grace one lover easing another onto a soft mattress, but gravity and physics tend to override pretty words. The couples ignored how they nearly crashed back onto the back and if any of them chose to acknowledge it, it only came across as slightly funny and added to the whimsical feeling that was growing. Once started, were they headed to the point of no return?_

Claudius was the first to pay. The Queen may not have been the first doomed, but she was the first to fall. Claudius was the only one to watch what he had done to his beloved, fitting in its way because he had also been the only one to know what he had done to the person that had been precious to them both. He had hoped fervently- without founding- that the poison had been a dud, that he had somehow offered the wrong glass. Such was not so. When the queen fell, he kept himself distracted by keeping focused on the duel.

However, Laertes was already beginning to regret. He was remembering, as though the stab on his arm had brought revelations, instead of death, just what the person in front of him meant. Without his sister and his father, Hamlet was the only one to care about him. This crowd of people meant nothing. However, he could not dismiss from his eyes the sight of the innocently fatal wound he had stung. For a moment, he wanted to plead with Hamlet, to confess and be done with it. Perhaps some good might still come out this and he would not have to lose his prince. But the wildness in Hamlet's eyes made him look like a stranger, even to the one who loved him most, and Laertes lost the will to speak.

People clambered around their Queen and inquires sprang up everywhere. Claudius, desperate to stay in denial, demanded that attention return to the duel. He saw, upon both their sleeves, blood, but it no longer mattered to him. Gertrude, not understanding, but somehow comprehending that her love had betrayed her, cried out to Hamlet in despair. Then she was gone and there was nothing left to hold Hamlet back.

If Hamlet's eyes were strange to Laertes before, they became almost bestial with their rage. He echoed out his mother's words of treachery and for the first time, Claudius felt fear.

Laertes, looking at the man that had become a husk of the young man he once knew, felt only sadness. He was starting to become light-headed, and though his chest began to burn, it was getting harder and harder to breathe. However, he no longer panicked and instead came the peaceful acceptance of death.

Thank God for Laertes.

Thank God because it was through Laertes that justice was allowed to be served. He could have passed on his last breaths, saying aloud, at last, the words that had only been wondered at in solitude. Instead, he chose love, real love, to give Hamlet what he needed, the proof of what Claudius was all along.

And perhaps, in a strange way, seeing Laertes lying limply on the stone floor, his last moments fleeing, was not meant to be a punishment for Hamlet. For all though, through Laertes's words, he began to understand that it was his fault the dark-haired man was dying, the sight touched something within him that bled away the hatred into something softer and lasting. So even as his sword pierced through his uncle's all-too-human flesh, he gave the last mercy he could, "Follow my mother."

_It was then the couple's two love stories diverged._

_Lost in their newfound freedom, Claudius continued onward and pressed Gertrude down onto the bed. They lost themselves in each other, throwing out their senses along with the memory of the man that, though dearly loved by them both, had so long stood in the way of the love they both needed. It is here the story leaves them, because there are some places a story is not meant to follow. There, in their bedroom, at last as free as any could be in their passion, King and Queen melted away into simply a man and a woman._

It was in that moment that nephew and uncle could see each other for how similar they truly were. Two men who were too human and had fallen in love with the right people at the wrong time. Two men who felt their forbidden love grow and blossom, however much they tried to damper it. Two men who loved deeply and passionately, wishing only for the freedoms others took for granted. However, that was where it ended.

Claudius had corrupted himself and through him, his love, by committing a foul crime in the name of it and ambition. The taint, though hidden carefully, had only grown into a poison that had wrapped itself around the neck of his relationship, tightening until his release had become his own downfall. Afterwards, Gertrude and he had only celebrated, immersing themselves in their newfound freedom. But it was not to be. There is always a price to pay and unfortunately for Gertrude, Claudius had deemed it worth it.

Their punishment for daring to bring their love into the open.

_Hamlet and Laertes, however, stopped. _

Laertes died not too long after, granting both Hamlet and himself forgiveness, for that night and many moments before it. There was no verdict from the judge and jury, only forgiveness. Forgiveness and love let Laertes close his eyes with a soft smile.

And Hamlet died too, completing the tragedy. A fitting end for such a sad tale. He had left instruction with Horatio- dear, dear Horatio, who he now wished he had told because Horatio was one of those rare people who would have understood- to tell his story, to right the last wrongs. Because too much sadness had come out of this to leave way for more to come. Besides, Hamlet, personally, did not see it as the tragic ending all mourned it to be.

_They didn't know why, but it felt right to somewhat draw apart and look back into each other's eyes. Somehow, just somehow, this was ok. To just be together through the night, a night held in each other's arms and feeling a comforting warmth by their side. They realized, at about the same time, that they would be the last person they would see before drifting to sleep and at the same time, the first they would see when they awoke. And somehow, that was enough. _

_The final part of a relationship is consummating it, but that is not always with two bodies intertwining. That was but a profession of love, a giving of love- but not love itself. Love has to come from somewhere else and so does its strength. _

_Not all come to understand it, but that night, chaste as it was, Hamlet and Laertes comprehended a truth, a truth that even people much older than them, even loves as similar to their own, had not yet found. _

_That love goes beyond life, beyond death. Beyond understanding and acceptance. It is the deepest part of being human and yet the most fundamental. The pleasures that occur with the body don't last, even ones as simple as holding a hand that will hold back all night. _

_But love counts for something. _

Because in his mind echoed the last words he had murmured across the wind, the only words he had dared to say aloud to his lover: the reassurances that would soon follow in the afterlife. Though there would not be enough time for a priest to come and absolve him of all his sins, Hamlet did not fear. For Laertes, in his last words, had granted forgiveness and love, two things Hamlet knew to be holy. He took comfort in that and in the fact that something above this place of earthly bodies was understanding and peace.

With his uncle.

With his mother.

With his father.

With Laertes.

- END

_For Taylor,_

_For putting thoughts in people's heads that just __**don't**__ go away._


End file.
